Edwin Toonen

Edwin is a specialist in strategic content. Before joining Yoast, he spent years honing his skills at the leading web design magazine in the Netherlands.

The Google Search Console is a must-have tool for any website owner as it gives you an incredible amount of information about how your website is doing in search results. We strongly recommend that you add your website to the Google Search Console to take full advantage of all the insights. Yoast SEO can help you verify your website so you can get the most of it. It only takes a few steps to get your website connected to the Google Search Console with a little help from Yoast SEO. Let’s see how it works!

What is Search Console and why should you use it?

Google’s free Search Console tool provides website owners with many tools to help them check their website’s performance. Not only does it show how your website is doing under the hood, it also shows how searchers see your website in search results. You’ll learn about the keywords and search queries that are generating traffic, the rich search results your content has received, and how your mobile website is doing. You can also check whether Google can access your content. In short, use it! Here is our beginner’s guide to Google Search Console to get you started.

How to verify your website in the Google Search Console with Yoast SEO

It’s easy to add your website to Google Search Console – it just takes a few steps. Here we walk you through the process. First of all, you need a Google Search Console account. Don’t have an account? Sign up for the Google Search Console now. Once you have done this, here are the steps you can take:

1. Go to the Google Search Console.

   Log in or click “Start Now” if necessary.

2. Under the Search drop-down list, click Add Property.

   You can add up to 1000 properties to your Google Search Console account.

3. S.Choose the property type, Enter your website url and click “Next”.

   Which option you choose is up to you. The domain option is more flexible but more difficult to verify because it has to do it with DNS. In this example we are using the url prefix option. Please make sure you enter your full url. For example, if your website is https://yourdomain.com/, it must be that exact URL. Don’t forget the / at the end of the url. If your site uses WWW or HTTP, you will need to add properties for these as well. Google offers several ways to verify your website and even suggests adding several ways for security reasons. If you are not sure what your site is about, please speak to your host provider.

4. Click the arrow next to “HTML Tag” to expand the option.

   There are several ways to verify your website, but we’ve made it easy for you. We only need the authorization code so that we can insert it into Yoast SEO.

5. Copy the meta tag.

   Highlight all of the meta tag code. Right-click the highlighted tag and click Copy, or use the copy commands Ctrl-C on Windows or Cmd-C on Mac. We only need the long line of characters in the content part to add your website to the Google Search Console.

6. Sign in to your WordPress website.

   When you are logged in, you are in your ‘Dashboard’.

7. Click on ‘SEO’ > ‘General’.

   You will see a menu on the left. Click on “SEO” in this menu. Then click General for more options.

8. Click the Webmaster Tools tab.

   This page contains all the fields to submit the verification codes for the various webmaster tools from Baidu, Google, Yandex and Bing.

9. Paste the code into the google box.

   All you have to do is enter the range of random letters and numbers. After entering the code, click the “Save Changes” button.

10. Go back to the Google Search Console and click “Confirm”.

    Congratulations! You have connected your website to the Google Search Console! After you have verified and linked your site, you can submit your sitemap. Not to mention all of the other cool things Search Console is capable of!

It’s easy to connect your website to the Google Search Console

We have made it very easy to connect your website to Search Console and we highly recommend that you do so. Search Console gives you a wealth of information about how your website is performing. It not only shows you what is going right, but most of all what is going wrong. The advice you get is very actionable and most things are easy to follow.

PS: Here’s how to check your verification tag in Search Console

If you need to check your verification, you can easily do it by following the steps below:

1. Go to the top left and select your domain

2. Select Settings in the menu bar. Then click on Confirmation of Ownership

3. Click HTML Tag and check that the verification tag matches.

Use it to your advantage

Once you’ve figured out all of this, your Google Search Console should be prepared and ready to go! The Google Search Console is a must-have tool for any website owner as it gives you an incredible amount of information about how your website is doing in search results. We strongly recommend that you connect your website to the Google Search Console in order to take full advantage of all the insights. For further help with repairing your website, Yoast SEO Premium is highly recommended.

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